1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus and a method for setting formed articles in a desired spacial order.
2. Brief Description of the Background of the Invention
Including Prior Art
Kamphues in U.S. Pat. No. 3,887,060 discloses apparatus and methods for forming rows of selectively spaced articles. An array of formed bricks is made up of longitudinal rows and cross rows and this array of bricks is lifted up from rollers by carrying strips and moved in the direction of the roller axes until the front cross row in the direction of movement encounters an impedance which pushes the last cross row from the carrying strips back onto the rollers. The remaining lifted up cross rows are upon lifting of the impedance moved on until reaching a desired cross row distance. A new impedance then effects that another cross row of bricks is pushed from the carrying strips onto the rollers. Such a pushing of cross row after cross row of bricks from the carrying strips onto the rollers results in cross rows having certain defined distances from each other. The total path of the carrying strips corresponds to the total space taken up by the brick array after separating the cross rows.
It is a disadvantage of this apparatus that the green bricks during the formation of the spaced array are moved from a higher level, the carrying strips, to a lower level, the rollers by tipping. This tipping results in an inaccurate transfer of the green bricks, since the green bricks are thereby deformed based on their larger or smaller attachment to the higher level and the distances between the individual cross rows become inaccurate. This is in particular the case, when the arrays are formed by green bricks of low cutting width. It is then possible that the green bricks fall out of the gripper during transporting them, since they had not been sufficiently caught by the gripper. In the conventional apparatus the level receiving the green bricks and during array reformation higher lying level of carrying strips covers a path which corresponds to the total width of the array. Only then the carrying strip level can be lowered below the level of the rollers and be brought back to its starting position to start the formation of a new array. These steps of motion take a lot of time and are therefor a negative factor on the output.